The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe (14 page)

When asked to clarify, she challenged our reporter to a hundred days of hand-to-hand combat, which our reporter declined by running away screaming, pursued by hundreds of battle-hardened children.

It's still just a lazy day here in Night Vale. Mayor Pamela Winchell called a press conference, and then did not speak. She sat on a folding chair next to the podium, her head lolled back, taking a brief nap, before getting up and jumping, folding chair in hand, through a small glowing portal she created in midair. All of this would have been quite rude to the attending reporters if a single one of them had actually attended, but they called a press conference of their own to announce that they just were going to take the rest of the day off, if that was okay. That the still afternoon sunlight was somehow more conducive to a gentle rest than the dark cradle of night. No one showed up to that press conference either.

Carlos has vacuumed his living room and is now organizing his closets. He's holding up items and making decisions. He is humming. The grass cannot hum, and so is silent.

The vague yet menacing government agency would like to remind you that UFOs are totally not a thing. They remind you that UFOs are merely weather balloons, and further, that weather balloons are merely misplaced clouds, that clouds are merely dreams that have escaped our sleep, that sleep is merely a practice for death, that death is merely another facet of our world, no different from, say, sand or bicycles, and that the great glowing earth is merely the last thoughts of a dying man, laughing and shaking his head weakly at the improbability of it all. Remember, it's not just the law. It's an illusion.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and you know what that means! It means it's time for us to go groveling to the Brown Stone Spire, thanking it for all that it has done and all that it has mercifully not done. This is just a great time to get the family together, eat your fill, then crawl out through the sharp rocks and sand until your knees leave blood streaks on the barren earth, and you feel the Brown Stone Spire loom up before you but you dare not look, you dare not look.

“Thank you,” you whisper. “Thank you. Thank you.” More plea than prayer. More fear than gratitude. And if it accepts what you have to say, you and your family can return to your homes, shaking, safe, together, shaking, together. And if it does not accept what you say? It doesn't really matter what happens after that, does it? I mean, would knowing make it any easier? No. Knowing never does.

The Brown Stone Spire: Give thanks. Cry out thanks. Scream thanks.

And now for a word from our sponsors.

Today's broadcast is brought to you by CostCo: How much could a body even weigh?

In addition, today's broadcast is brought to you by waves of sound that are somehow carried by a form of light and that a machine is turning into an invisible man talking to you, intimately, quietly, into your ear. That doesn't seem natural to us. Strexcorp Synergists, Inc. Distrust all that you previously trusted.

This day in which nothing happens continues to not.

Even bodily functions are taking the day off. Reports are coming in that hearts are failing to beat, lungs failing to inflate, the muscles of the arms and legs turning to a loose, relaxed jelly. People are falling dead in the street, suddenly blue, suddenly seizing, spit dribbling from their lips in tiny pools of foam and mud in the sand. Loved ones, looking on, without the energy needed to weep. Just nothing much of any kind going on. A lazy, lazy day.

Our favorite local cereal company, Flakey O's, is gearing up to announce their newest big product: Imaginary Corn Flakes. The cereal chefs down at Flakey O's are taking only the sweetest, most noncarcinogenic cobs of imaginary corn, supplied by John Peters, you know, the farmer? They are distilling that imaginary taste down to a crisp, flavor-packed imaginary corn flake, ready for you to eat out of a big bowl of milk. “We are very excited about this product,” said Miranda Yesby, of the new Flakey O's board of directors. “We are thrilled to be working with John Peters, you know, the farmer? I mean, as soon as we can find him. Has anyone seen him? He's become as hard to locate as his corn.”

Miranda also said that there are no plans to do viral marketing involving a sentient, transdimensional pyramid, as the costs on the last one were just too high. “I mean we had nothing to do with that,” she said. “But if we did, then we might say a certain sentient pyramid really got an outsized ego after one simple viral marketing campaign and started making unreasonable demands, like a transdimensional trailer on location that is normal size on the outside but contains within it vast, looming spaces, impossible, endless. Also health benefits. So if that were the case, we would probably have had to let the sentient pyramid go.”

Miranda then thanked us for attending the announcement, and dug her way back into the Flakey O's offices using her large, clawlike paws.

And now traffic. A few drops of icemelt. Almost invisible as they slide down great slabs of mountain rock. Joining together into a slight trickle, the mere suggestion of movement and water. That suggestion becoming more clear, clear water, clearly moving in a clear trickle downwards forming with others into a stream. A stream rolling over pebbles and around debris, hardly any force behind it but implacable in its searching out of lower ground. And then gasping from some height as a splash into a river. A deep river, churning its way through a landscape, drawing boundaries over which wars can later be fought. Slamming against boulders with violence but without malice. Becoming wider, slower, like a human settling into the better part of age, a river that only shows evidence of movement when it carries some other thing, some life, upon it, like a human settling into the better part of age. And finally, one last exit, a great engulfing by an ocean, in which all water is the same water. In which we can finally find some rest. Like a human settling into the better. Like a human settling. This has been traffic.

And the lazy day continues. A neon sign advertising the World's Best Burgers blinks uselessly in the glaring haze of the sun, its light as small as the probability of its claim. The Earth is starting to slow its rotation, joining in on the mass malaise. Magnetic fields are going crazy. They are the only things going crazy, everything else is completely mellowed out.

Those people with still functioning hearts and lungs are lounging around, saying “Ah, who cares?” and “What a bother” when presented with stimulus or thought. The Earth is slowing. Gravity is slacking off. My mic is floating.

Carlos is also floating, and he's taking this opportunity to clean out the gutter on his roof. How industrious. How . . . ah. I don't really have the energy to think of another word.

Radio waves are reacting strangely to the loss of gravity, the change in magnetism as the Earth slows, so if you are having difficulty receiving this message, we apologize, but we won't do anything about it. Doing things, right? Movement, you know? Existing? Do you see what I mean?

Oh, what's that? Intern Maureen is flicking her eyes up in her otherwise motionless face. Her mouth is set into a deep lull, her cheeks are slack. I believe she is indicating something. I suppose I should turn my head and look. I suppose. Oh. Oh, all right. Here I go. Listeners, I am engaging the muscles in my neck, and I am turning my head. Ah, I see. The sun is going out. Yes, a black tumor of darkness, of absence, is on the face of the brightness. The brightness is dimming. The source of all life is going, is joining the rest of us in taking today to do nothing. That's probably not good. We should probably do something about that. But . . . It's like . . . well, anyway, at least I got to see how
Breaking Bad
ended.

And now, I don't so much take you, as just kind of leave you, just kind of disappear and gently nudge you toward, in the heart of a world that soon won't be, the weather.

WEATHER: “Mijn Manier” by Brainpower

Welcome back. Welcome back, I guess, from a crisis. Welcome back from, I guess, a crisis. How was it solved? How was the day saved?

It wasn't. It didn't need to be. There are lulls and gaps and rests and stops, but this world stumbles on. The sun flared back. The world restarted. Still bodies, blue in the gray street, gasped suddenly and rose back into the blue-gray light of day.

We wake up. We move on. No state is our state forever. All is fleeting.

Frances Donaldson, manager of the Antiques Mall, has gone back to violently smashing her stock of old items, as is usual. The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home has gone back to flitting around in the corner of your eye, rearranging your belongings according to some unknown purpose. The flies are still buzzing around that trash can, but with more verve, more zest.

Intern Maureen brought me some coffee. That's helping. Coffee helps sometimes though, doesn't it? Other times it just makes things worse. I mean everything does.

Business is booming. People are moving. Events, transpiring. All as usual, all returning. We are up! We are full of energy! We are ready for the next great thing to be made for us and delivered to us and done to us!

Carlos, meanwhile, says he's had a busy day and might take a nap now. That . . . well that sounds nice. Listeners, I think now is the time at which I must say good-bye. There's a place, here in Night Vale, a place I'd like to be just now. Maybe my lazy day isn't quite done after all.

Stay tuned next for a keening howl, a scratch at the door, a hood falling suddenly over your face, and a delicious roasted squash recipe your family will just love.

Good night, Night Vale. Good night.

PROVERB: On this day in history: mundanity, and terror, and food, and love, and trees.

EPISODE 36:

“MISSING”

DECEMBER 1, 2013

M
Y FAVORITE PLAY IS
T
HE
L
IFE OF
G
ALILEO
BY
B
ERTOLT
B
RECHT
. I
T'S
long and didactic, pretty stilted and varies wildly in quality based on the director. So, basically, go check it out if you haven't already.

Many of Brecht's ideas have popped up in my writing. This episode in particular, I wanted to deal with heroism. Not necessarily what it takes to be a hero, but what it means to need a hero. If you believe in free will, and if you believe in democracy, and if you believe in the wisdom of crowds, perhaps heroism is anathema. Perhaps you are the change you wish to see. Or more likely, you are part of a will of people to affect greater good to be moral and just.
^*

When Galileo is dressed down by his assistant, Andrea, for recanting his scientific teachings before a church inquisition, Galileo admits that he found it more compelling to live than to be martyred. Andrea says, “Unhappy is the land that has no hero.” Galileo retorts, “Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.”

Galileo's (and Brecht's) point is that we shouldn't need heroes. We should have a perfect and peaceful communistic society and la la la. Plus, there is a distinct danger of having a culture that thinks it needs a hero, or, more specifically, thinks it needs saving. (See Clint Eastwood's 1973 western
High Plains Drifter
for a prescient tale of early 2000s US politics—the dangerous power we give to those we think can protect us.)

With Tamika, I wanted to set up a hero that Night Vale thinks it needs. Does Night Vale need Tamika? Not saying they don't or shouldn't. I'm just saying.

—Jeffrey Cranor

^*
I write all of this before the 2016 US presidential election. So maybe Trump got elected and you're a fatalist and a pessimist and you live in a bunker in the middle of the Australian Outback now. Lots of things are possible.

Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky at night, the sailors are howling and laughing. The sailors begin to surround us, and the night sky is so very red.

WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE.